TravisHuckins
Experienced Member
My DOS PC's speaker is kinda quiet. How would I go about increasing it's volume for games that only use that for sound? Would I have to replace the speaker itself?
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increasing pc speaker volume?
- Thread starter TravisHuckins
- Start date
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Depends on how far you're willing to go. You can install a cheap amplifier that takes its input using a dummy load resistor and a coupling capacitor in place of the original speaker--and use the original speaker fed by the amplifier. Shouldn't take more than a watt or two of amplifier. There are probably kits on eBay.
Scali
Veteran Member
Some sound cards have a PC speaker connection on their mixer, such as the Sound Blaster Pro. You can just connect a wire from the PC speaker header on the motherboard to the sound card, and then the audio will be routed via the mixer and the onboard amplifier of the soundcard, allowing you to use headphones or speakers.
olePigeon
Veteran Member
For unpowered speakers connected to a SoundBlaster card, make sure to install the SoundBlaster software. You can then set the volume there (and make sure to adjust the volume knob, too.) I learned that recently. 
Dwight Elvey
Veteran Member
What component of the sound are you missing. A 2.5 inch speaker will never produce window shattering base unless the cone flies out and hits the window.
Dwight
Dwight
TravisHuckins
Experienced Member
It's just too quiet overall... games with adlib music but pc speaker sfx the sfx gets drowned out by the music at low volumes even.
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Chuck(G)
25k Member
...or just use a set of headphones. Plenty loud and won't annoy the quiet souls around you.
TravisHuckins
Experienced Member
My PC setup is in a giant room where I also have a bunch of musical instruments and a recording setup so I'm not worried about annoying people. lol
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Do you have a separate amplifier with line-in inputs? You can use that...
TravisHuckins
Experienced Member
I might try the Sound Blaster approach or try using the speaker from my old Gateway 2000 which was much louder if I could get it out.
TravisHuckins
Experienced Member
I installed the speaker from my Gateway 2000 case and it puts out a good volume. I can actually hear them in games with adlib music now! The strange thing was that the speaker had the same specs but just louder for some reason. I guess early 90's speakers had better volume than the ones in the later 90's.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Actually, for the best match, you should be using a high-impedance (say 16 or 32 ohms) speaker. Or better yet, try a small output transformer, say 500 ohm to 8 ohm. That's my reckoning anyway...
eeguru
Veteran Member
Related question: I'm working on a project where I need to capture PC speaker audio accurately on an external board. I've considered a couple solutions and am about to build a board to test all of them. And then this thread started me questioning by current method. I want to capture the true acoustic sound coming out a typical 4 or 8 ohm speaker ala 5150. It doesn't have to be real time.
The external capture card has other analog circuitry on it and needs to have a clean analog domain as possible. So rather than connecting the (-) speaker lead to the card's local ground, I figured I treat the input as a current loop. I have the speaker inputs run through a 16 ohm resistor and input side of an opto-isolator. The other side is a Schmidt open-collector output to a digital pull-up to the input of my capture IC. I figured with only a PIT driving the speaker, this would transfer the pulse modulated wave-form accurately to my capture device. Then I could apply a set of filters in post that mimic the frequency response of any physical speaker I want.
Does this sound sane? Or should I try and use an ADC instead?
The external capture card has other analog circuitry on it and needs to have a clean analog domain as possible. So rather than connecting the (-) speaker lead to the card's local ground, I figured I treat the input as a current loop. I have the speaker inputs run through a 16 ohm resistor and input side of an opto-isolator. The other side is a Schmidt open-collector output to a digital pull-up to the input of my capture IC. I figured with only a PIT driving the speaker, this would transfer the pulse modulated wave-form accurately to my capture device. Then I could apply a set of filters in post that mimic the frequency response of any physical speaker I want.
Does this sound sane? Or should I try and use an ADC instead?
Trixter
Veteran Member
I've already done some tests on this very subject. It's not finished, but I have samples and reasoning for you to watch. I'll send you an email.
Not only a PIT drives the speaker -- there were CPU-driven methods. Not sure if your circuit accounts for this, or whether it is even relevant for your purposes.
Not only a PIT drives the speaker -- there were CPU-driven methods. Not sure if your circuit accounts for this, or whether it is even relevant for your purposes.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Depending on you particular system and sound card, some BLASTERS have an input jack for system sounds as well as an input for CD-ROM's.
Trixter
Veteran Member
Sound cards that route speaker audio have their own set of pros and cons.
It's killing me that I don't have my video on this very subject finished. I'll try to finish it up this weekend and post a link here.
It's killing me that I don't have my video on this very subject finished. I'll try to finish it up this weekend and post a link here.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
What Jim said--it's quite possible to do software-driven PWM through the speaker, for example.
eeguru
Veteran Member
This is good because I'm about to wrap Jim up into this project. So careful about getting me excited!